


on your own tonight

by ofrainyskiesandviolets



Series: derry girls: trying to be pretty canon in between episodes [1]
Category: Derry Girls (TV)
Genre: Angst, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:54:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22452223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofrainyskiesandviolets/pseuds/ofrainyskiesandviolets
Summary: Post 1x1After the news of Kathy’s departure is broken, Michelle actually feels bad for James (though it absolutely shatters her pride to admit it).
Relationships: None
Series: derry girls: trying to be pretty canon in between episodes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1615570
Comments: 13
Kudos: 115





	on your own tonight

Michelle prides herself on a number of things, one of them being her naturally blunt disposition. She’s never been one to beat around the bush, in fact she tends to find those who did to come across quite insufferable at times. Since she was a wain, she’s made herself very clear on what she did and didn’t like–she liked chips and Eoin O’Connor (or at least she had, before he stuck a fat wad of gum in her hair in grade two), and going to the cinema with her friends; she didn’t like carrots and maths and she especially didn’t like her cousin. It’s been years and years since she’d first met him, and Michelle still tends to adamantly insist that James and her are never going to end up friends, or anything close to the sort, quick to throw the first insult or call him some name. She keeps her likes and dislikes quite well sorted and clearly defined, but she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t accept that she wasn’t quite sure why she was meant to dislike James so much.

As a kid things had been much more certain. His accent makes him sound like a prick, he’s weird, he doesn’t like the same things as her, and while all that’s still true, Michelle can’t bring herself to hate James with the same fervor. She’ll never dare admit that though, and she’ll definitely never admit that she almost feels bad for her cousin. Stealing glances at him in the back of the car on the way home, she thinks James looks a bit like a kicked puppy. She thinks maybe she should tease him, tell him to shape up and dry his eyes like her mother had back in Sister Michael’s office, but she can’t bring herself to. She can’t imagine she’d be very happy either, what if her own mother had dumped her off with family she barely knew in a town she knew even less. For once, Michelle bites her tongue. 

They return home and get sent to their rooms until supper, with a resounding promise of a firm talk with Michelle’s father later. James has little reaction, which surprises Michelle, as she doubts her Aunt Kathy was one to do much disciplining. Michelle doesn’t know much about his old stepfather though, maybe he’d been one to lay down the law. She realizes that there’s very little she knows about her cousin’s life in London.

Michelle moans on their way up the stairs, because what else is there to do when you get punished for taking back what’s rightfully yours? She expects James to quip back, maybe tell her to piss off, but he stays quiet, leaving her at her bedroom door and disappearing down the hall to his own without so much as a word. She stands staring at the closed door and wondering what was going through Kathy’s head when she left him. 

How had it all gone down, she wonders. How long had she been planning to dump him off here and fuck off back to her fancy London life? Something like guilt overcomes her. As much as James is annoying, she doesn’t think anyone deserves to be fucked over by their own mam. 

Michelle goes into her room, lays back on the bed, and ponders her situation. So much has changed in the past couple of weeks, with Kathy knocking on the door out of the blue, with James and what seemed like a million trunks to boot. Could she really have been planning it if she packed so much shite? Christ, Michelle can’t decide if it would be worse to be knowingly led to your own abandonment, or to be left on a whim without so much as a second thought. She’d always liked her Aunt Kathy, but maybe she just hadn’t been aware of how callous the woman could be. Her own parents sometimes showed a pointed disinterest in what she was doing, but they were always there when it counted, when she needed them. 

She doesn’t like thinking about things like this. Guilt is no fun. It’s not like she had anything to do with it, right? James is annoying, she’s always thought that. He’s been excruciatingly quiet and almost strange since they’d first met, not Orla-strange, but strange in his own way. He is weird, and now he’s in her life permanently, hanging over her home like a silent, lone cloud. It’s a nuisance having to show him around her school and introduce him to her friends and her life. It threw everything off kilter.

Still, Michelle can’t stop thinking about his silence since her mam dropped the news of Kathy leaving, and there’s so much about the situation she just can’t fathom. What could’ve happened in the years they barely knew each other to make his own mother up and dump him? 

Knowing her mam doesn’t want to see her right now doesn’t stop her from going downstairs and standing in the entrance to the kitchen, waiting for her mother to notice her presence. Deirdre is still in her work uniform, bustling around the kitchen trying to clean the dishes still piled in the sink from breakfast. There never was enough time to clean up in the morning, they were all so busy. 

“Ach, Michelle, I thought I said to go to your room ‘til your da gets home,” Deirdre chides, tossing a look over her shoulder as she dries an old, chipping pot. That pot must be as old as she is, at this point. Michelle has distinct memories of her mam making dinners for their little family on while Michelle sat at the table and did her homework. She isn’t typically one to be sentimental, but something about those memories warmed her heart a bit. She’s getting soft.

“I know, but, Mam, I had a question.” 

“Right, well what is it? I still have tea to make, you know.” Pulling a box of pasta and a jar of sauce from the pantry, Deirdre never stills her actions. Her mother is always busy and working. Michelle feels like a fucking pansy, but she gets a pang of sympathy for her mam, and thinks maybe she should thank her more. 

“Mam, did you know James’ mam was going to go back to London?” Her mam finally stops, holding a pot half-filled with water. Deirdre sighs, carries the pot over to the stove and turns the burner on. The flame licks at it’s bottom, electric blue and small. Her mother pulls a seat out at the kitchen table and settles into it. It creaks with the age of a thousand years, weary and tired from its long life in the Mallon household. 

“Yes, I did. She told me a few nights ago.” Michelle didn’t want to think that Deirdre would just let Kathy disappear like that, let her leave her wain behind to his aunt and uncle. It makes indignation flare up inside of her. 

“You knew and you didn’t stop her? How could you let her do that, Mam?” Letting out a long, low breath, Deirdre pushes out the chair diagonal to her, patting its base with something akin to resignation. Michelle almost expected more fight in response in her words. It wasn’t like her mother to let her take that accusatory tone. Her shock leads her to sit down silently, ready to listen to her mam despite usually tuning her out. 

“I didn’t want to, Michelle, I really didn’t, and that’s not to say I mind taking care of James, I don’t, but I did try and convince her to stay. She wouldn’t listen.” Her mam wipes a hand across her face, and then looks back to Michelle, her face so serious that it almost scares her. “Though I must say, I do think it might be best for him this way.” 

“But she’s his mam, mam. How could it be better for her to not be here?” Michelle fucking hates letting her cousin get to her this much, but it doesn’t make any sense to her. Her Aunt Kathy is the most elusive, enigmatic woman ever. Nothing she did seemed to mean anything the next day. It would always be forgotten, and Michelle has a sick feeling that she might’ve viewed her son the same way. 

“Michelle, your aunt is a real piece of work. I honestly don’t know if she ever cared for James the way a mother should. I’d always worried about him, down there in London, I did. She’d tell me stories about going out with her friends and having dinners with coworkers or Paul, but she almost never mentioned James, not unless I asked or if she had something to complain about. And the things she complained about were never anything worth complaining about, it was just her moaning about him being odd because he had a tendency to get distracted or he was too quiet for her liking. She talked about him like was a nuisance, Michelle. 

“Kathy was never a motherly type, and I’ve been worrying for that boy since the moment I found out she was pregnant. I know it may not make sense, and I know it must be frustrating having such a big adjustment in your life, but James deserves better than what my sister was giving him. That’s the reason I let Kathy go back to London. Because we’re Mallons, Michelle, and if someone in our family needs help, we give it to them, you understand?”

“Yeah, Mam, I get it.” She does, but it still feels foreign and unnaturally cruel. What was it that made her mam and Aunt Kathy so different? Why does James end up getting dumped off while she ends up getting cared for and loved (in an Irish way, of course)?

As Michelle goes up the stairs, she thinks back to the only time she’d visited James, Paul and Kathy in London, when she and James were seven. She’d overheard a discussion between the adults while James was in the bathroom. Paul had been telling her parents about problems James was having at school, with kids picking on him and whatnot. Kathy was a bit indifferent, saying it’d toughen him up, it was a natural part of childhood. Despite her reluctance to open up to even the idea of liking her cousin, that was the first time Michelle had felt this protective flare for James. She couldn’t imagine the meek, quiet boy ever standing up for himself against bullies, and he didn’t deserve it, even if he was annoying. 

She stands outside of James’ room and debates knocking, tries to imagine her cousin inside mulling over the new developments. Would he be completely silent and outwardly impassive, or would he be fighting back tears, or even further, crying silently and shaking and wondering why he wasn’t good enough? No light streams out from underneath his door, and she finds something profoundly sad about thinking about James sitting alone in the dark bedroom. It’s enough to make her open the door, slowly and quietly so as not to draw too much attention to herself.

Michelle wants to comfort James, but the thought of being open and receptive scares her a little; when did she ever do that? It’s foreign and unnatural. Being gentle to her cousin feels almost the same as she imagines it is for him being in this new town. She’s slightly relieved to find him asleep, unstirring at the sound of the door creaking. She has a feeling that she’d mess up anything she tried to say to him anyway. 

Michelle shuts the door again, slowly settling it into the frame with a care she almost never possesses. She returns to her room and cracks into her homework, with nothing better to do until supper. It’s hard for her to focus, still thinking about James and his predicament.

She wishes there was more she could do for him, but she couldn’t drag Kathy back, or make her a better mam. She doesn’t want to stop taking the mick out of him—it’s what they do and have been doing for years, and changing that would honestly probably leave him feeling more out of place. 

She wouldn’t let anyone know, but she supposed it wouldn’t do any harm to just keep an eye on James, make sure he’s alright and all that. He’s annoying and painfully British, but he is her cousin. Her quiet, kind cousin who tended to get the short end of the stick. Watching out for him is the natural thing to do, him being so soft and all, that is. 

Michelle is brash and hotheaded and sometimes a bit too sarcastic, but all else, she’s a Mallon. And accents and annoyances aside, Mallons take care of their own.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for any errors and such, I’m always going back and editing though.  
> Also I swear I write for more than Derry Girls lol. The posts to this thread will be sort of sporadic, I’m using these as palette refreshers and getting my creative juices flowing lol.  
> Hope you liked it :)  
> title is from I Know It’s Over by The Smiths


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